Tag: waves (page 2 of 9)

Ascension Earth 2015-05-09 17:40:00

May 9, 2015 / / 0 Comments




 MAY 9, 2015: USGS map shows the location of the 4.5 quake (large blue dot in Ka'u) among the many smaller quakes that occurred on the Big Island over the last two weeks.

MAY 9, 2015: USGS map shows the location of the 4.5 quake (large blue dot in Ka'u) among the many smaller quakes that occurred on the Big Island over the last two weeks. - See more at: http://www.bigislandvideonews.com/2015/05/09/4-5-earthquake-shakes-big-island/#sthash.SS9H2Oiy.dpuf

 bigislandvideonews.com


Magnitude-4.5 earthquake shakes Big Island of Hawaii; people around isle report light shakingNAʻALEHU – A magnitude-4.5 earthquake located in the Kaʻū District shook the Island of Hawaii on Saturday, May 9, at 2:18 a.m., HST.  The quake was centered 5 miles north of Naʻalehu at a depth of 6 miles, according to Wes Thelen, the Seismic Network Manager for the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. There were three aftershocks (magnitudes 1.6, 1.5, 1.4) of the earthquake were recorded as of 3:30 a.m., HST. Scientists say additional aftershocks are possible and could be felt.  Over 70 reports claimed to feel the earthquake within an hour of the event. Light shaking has been reported across the island. At these shaking intensities (Intensity IV), damage to buildings or structures is not expected, scientists said.      Over the past 30 years, the area north of Nāʻālehu has experienced 6 earthquakes, including today’s event, with magnitudes greater than 4.0 and at depths of 5–13 km (3.1–8.1 mi). This area of Kaʻū is a seismically active region where a magnitude-6.2 earthquake occurred in 1919. Areas adjacent to this morning’s event experienced earthquakes of magnitudes 6.0, 7.1, and 7.9 in 1868.      The depth, location, and recorded seismic waves of today’s earthquake suggest a source on the large fault plane between the old ocean floor and overlying volcanic crust, a common source for earthquakes in this area. USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory   The earthquake caused no detectable changes in Kīlauea Volcano’s ongoing eruptions, on Mauna Loa, or at other active volcanoes on the Island of Hawaiʻi, says USGS. A magnitude-3.1 earthquake that occurred in Kīlauea Caldera about one minute before the magnitude-4.5 earthquake was unrelated to the Naʻalehu event.  The Big Island has been experiencing elevated seismicity beneath Kīlauea’s summit and upper East and Southwest Rift Zones the past few weeks.
NAʻALEHU – A magnitude-4.5 earthquake located in the Kaʻū District shook the Island of Hawaii on Saturday, May 9, at 2:18 a.m., HST.
The quake was centered 5 miles north of Naʻalehu at a depth of 6 miles, according to Wes Thelen, the Seismic Network Manager for the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. There were three aftershocks (magnitudes 1.6, 1.5, 1.4) of the earthquake were recorded as of 3:30 a.m., HST. Scientists say additional aftershocks are possible and could be felt.
Over 70 reports claimed to feel the earthquake within an hour of the event. Light shaking has been reported across the island. At these shaking intensities (Intensity IV), damage to buildings or structures is not expected, scientists said.
Over the past 30 years, the area north of Nāʻālehu has experienced 6 earthquakes, including today’s event, with magnitudes greater than 4.0 and at depths of 5–13 km (3.1–8.1 mi). This area of Kaʻū is a seismically active region where a magnitude-6.2 earthquake occurred in 1919. Areas adjacent to this morning’s event experienced earthquakes of magnitudes 6.0, 7.1, and 7.9 in 1868.
The depth, location, and recorded seismic waves of today’s earthquake suggest a source on the large fault plane between the old ocean floor and overlying volcanic crust, a common source for earthquakes in this area. USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory
The earthquake caused no detectable changes in Kīlauea Volcano’s ongoing eruptions, on Mauna Loa, or at other active volcanoes on the Island of Hawaiʻi, says USGS. A magnitude-3.1 earthquake that occurred in Kīlauea Caldera about one minute before the magnitude-4.5 earthquake was unrelated to the Naʻalehu event.
The Big Island has been experiencing elevated seismicity beneath Kīlauea’s summit and upper East and Southwest Rift Zones the past few weeks.
- See more at: http://www.bigislandvideonews.com/2015/05/09/4-5-earthquake-shakes-big-island/#sthash.SS9H2Oiy.dpuf

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Are Aliens Finding Ways to Communicate With Humans From Deep Space? NASA intercepts strange “Alien Sounds”

May 8, 2015 / / 0 Comments




dailytimesgazette.com


The recent alien hunting projects of several teams might be another failure, but some unusual sounds were captured by a balloon experiment set up by NASA, which they think could possibly come from another alien life.

The balloon carries an infrasound microscope that is able to record sound waves in the atmosphere at frequencies lower than 20 hertz. The device is floating just 22 miles above the Earth when it picked up the strange sound.

It was Daniel Bowman, a student from the University of North Carolina, who designed and built the balloon equipment used in the study. The initial program managed by NASA and the Louisiana Space Consortium tested the flight of the equipment where they captured sounds from the atmosphere of Arizona and New Mexico. 
It was just one of the ten experiments flown atop of the High Altitude Student Platform that successfully picked up the sounds. 
The said program was able to launch more than 70 student experiments in search of a successful project since 2006.

As that one balloon fly over the height of 37,500 meters above Earth for 9 hours, which is just below the top of the stratosphere and higher than the flight height of airplanes, it got the record of the highest point an equipment carrying infrasound has ever reached.

But the record is not all that, the sound captured by the balloon is what researchers claimed as a signal that they never encountered before.

As Bowman has said, “It sounds kind of like ‘The X-Files’.” There is some possibility that the sound might have come from another alien life, but may also originate from wind farms, crashing ocean waves, atmospheric turbulence, gravity waves, and vibrations formed by the balloon cable.

Bowman reported, “I was surprised by the sheer complexity of the signal. I expected to see a few little stripes,” as he was pertaining to the visual representation of the sounds through spectrogram detailing. The frequency range below 20 hertz is not audible to human hearing frequency, so the team adjusted it faster during the analysis.

He added, “There haven’t been acoustic recordings in the stratosphere for 50 years. Surely, if we place instruments up there, we will find things we haven’t seen before.”

Infrasound carried at great distances from its source is usually formed by low-frequency wave-creating phenomenon, such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, thunderstorms and meteor showers. Scientists have long used infrasound detectors to monitor weather and geologic activity all over the planet. NASA also plans to use infrasound detectors on the much-awaited Mars mission.

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NASA student balloon captures mysterious sounds 23 miles above the Earth

May 6, 2015 / / 0 Comments

NASA-launched student balloonExcerpt from chron.comFor the first time in 50 years, microphones attached to a NASA-launched student balloon have captured strange hisses, crackling sounds and faint whistling.Researchers aren't sure what the sounds are ...

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Jane Goodall Says SeaWorld ‘Should Be Closed Down’

May 1, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Jane Goodall


Excerpt from huffingtonpost.com

NEW YORK -- Jane Goodall wants to see SeaWorld go extinct.
The 81-year-old primatologist said whales and dolphins should never be held in captivity, and that the entertainment company known for its orca shows should be shuttered.

“They definitely should be closed down,” Goodall said in an interview with The Huffington Post earlier this month. 

She’s not alone. SeaWorld’s stock price has been plummeting since July 2013, when CNN released the documentary “Blackfish." The film exposed the misery endured by SeaWorld's trained orca and the dangers posed to trainers working with stressed-out carnivorous whales. 

seaworld stock
SeaWorld's stock price has declined precipitously since the 2013 release of "Blackfish."

One of the problems highlighted in "Blackfish" is that cetacea, the family of aquatic mammals that includes whales, dolphins and porpoises, communicate with sonar-like sound waves. When confined to tanks, Goodall noted, those waves echo back and create a hellish cacophony for the animals.

“When they are contained in these tanks … that is acoustical hell,” said Goodall, adding that her nonprofit organization, the Jane Goodall Institute, is urging aquariums across the country to free their whales. “The sounds bounce back from the walls of the tank.”

SeaWorld aggressively refuted many of the film's claims, including allegations that its whales were unhealthy and that the company tried to cover up details surrounding the 2010 death of trainer Dawn Brancheau, who was mauled by an orca. 

After the release of "Blackfish," SeaWorld saw a rapid decline in visitors, and with that, in the price of shares. But on Monday, Goldman Sachs upgraded the stock, optimistic that the company can retool its image as consumers start forgetting about the blockbuster documentary.

"Jane Goodall is a respected scientist and advocate for the world’s primates, but we couldn’t disagree more with her on this," Becca Bides, a SeaWorld spokeswoman, said in an emailed statement. 

"Zoos and marine mammal parks like SeaWorld allow people to experience animals in a way that is inspiring and educational."
Asked about the allegation that SeaWorld's tanks are detrimental to whales, Bides denied the claim, arguing that they are specially crafted to keep underwater noise levels quieter than the ambient ocean.

As of last December, SeaWorld held 22 orcas in its three U.S. marine parks, five of which were caught in the wild, according to the nonprofit advocacy group Whale and Dolphin Conservation. A total of 57 orcas are held in captivity around the world, the group notes. At least 160 orcas have died in captivity since 1961, and an additional 30 pregnant whales have miscarried or had stillborn calves.

Goodall said she remains hopeful that humans are gaining a greater sense of empathy for animals and losing interest in watching them perform for entertainment.

“It’s not only that they’re really big, highly intelligent and social animals so that the capture and confinement in itself is cruel,” she said of the captive orcas, but also that “they have emotions like ours.”
She welcomed the decision by Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus to eliminate elephants in its shows by 2018.

“If you see what happens to those baby elephants, the way they’re trained, it’s absolutely chilling,” said Goodall, who had a pendant in the shape of Africa hanging from her necklace. “They lose all of their young elephant playfulness, and then they can be trained.”

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This revolutionary discovery could help scientists see black holes for the first time

April 29, 2015 / / 0 Comments


supermassive black hole
Artist's concept of the black hole.
Excerpt from finance.yahoo.com
Of all the bizarre quirks of nature, supermassive black holes are some of the most mysterious because they're completely invisible.
But that could soon change.
Black holes are deep wells in the fabric of space-time that eternally trap anything that dares too close, and supermassive black holes have the deepest wells of all. These hollows are generated by extremely dense objects thousands to billions of times more massive than our sun.
Not even light can escape black holes, which means they're invisible to any of the instruments astrophysicists currently use. Although they don't emit light, black holes will, under the right conditions, emit large amounts of gravitational waves — ripples in spacetime that propagate through the universe like ripples across a pond's surface.
And although no one has ever detected a gravitational wave, there are a handful of instruments around the world waiting to catch one.

Game-changing gravitational waves



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black hole
This illustration shows two spiral galaxies - each with supermassive black holes at their center - as they are about to collide. 

Albert Einstein first predicted the existence of gravitational waves in 1916. According to his theory of general relativity, black holes will emit these waves when they accelerate to high speeds, which happens when two black holes encounter one another in the universe.  

As two galaxies collide, for example, the supermassive black holes at their centers will also collide. But first, they enter into a deadly cosmic dance where the smaller black hole spirals into the larger black hole, moving increasingly faster as it inches toward it's inevitable doom. As it accelerates, it emits gravitational waves.
Astrophysicists are out to observe these waves generated by two merging black holes with instruments like the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory.
"The detection of gravitational waves would be a game changer for astronomers in the field," Clifford Will, a distinguished profess of physics at the University of Florida who studied under famed astrophysicist Kip Thorne told Business Insider. "We would be able to test aspects of general relativity that have not been tested."
Because these waves have never been detected, astrophysicists are still trying to figure out how to find them. To do this, they build computer simulations to predict what kinds of gravitational waves a black hole merger will produce. 

Learn by listening

In the simulation below, made by Steve Drasco at California Polytechnic State University (also known as Cal Poly), a black hole gets consumed by a supermassive black hole about 30,000 times as heavy.
You'll want to turn up the volume.
What you're seeing and hearing are two different things.
The black lines you're seeing are the orbits of the tiny black hole traced out as it falls into the supermassive black hole. What you're hearing are gravitational waves.
"The motion makes gravitational waves, and you are hearing the waves," Drasco wrote in a blog post describing his work.
Of course, there is no real sound in space, so if you somehow managed to encounter this rare cataclysmic event, you would not likely hear anything. However, what Drasco has done will help astrophysicists track down these illusive waves.

Just a little fine tuning 

Gravitational waves are similar to radio waves in that both have specific frequencies. On the radio, for example, the number corresponding to the station you're listening to represents the frequency at which that station transmits.


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gwaves
3D visualization of gravitational waves produced by 2 orbiting black holes. Right now, astrophysicists only have an idea of what frequencies two merging black holes transmit because they’re rare and hard to find. In fact, the first ever detection of an event of this kind was only announced this month. 

Therefore, astrophysicists are basically toying with their instruments like you sometimes toy with your radio to find the right station, except they don’t know what station will give them the signal they’re looking for.
What Drasco has done in his simulation is estimate the frequency at which an event like this would produce and then see how that frequency changes, so astrophysicists have a better idea of how to fine tune their instruments to search for these waves.
Detecting gravitational waves would revolutionize the field of astronomy because it would give observers an entirely new way to see the universe. Armed with this new tool, they will be able to test general relativity in ways never before made possible.

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The Secret To A Meaningful Life In Just 7 ‘Magic’ Words

April 28, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Excerpt from huffingtonpost.com Sometimes, it's the most fantastical, fictional characters that do the best job of teaching us about reality.New York Times bestselling author T.A. Barron spent decades creating the magical image of Merlin the wiza...

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Source of puzzling cosmic signals found — in the kitchen

April 10, 2015 / / 0 Comments






Parkes radio telescope
WHAT’S FOR DINNER? Signals detected by the Parkes radio telescope (pictured) suggest that intelligent life in the universe has a penchant for leftovers.



Excerpt from sciencenews.org

Mysterious radio signals detected by the Parkes telescope appear to come from an advanced civilization in the Milky Way. 

Unfortunately, it’s the one civilization we already know about.
Microwave ovens opened before they’re done cooking have been muddling the hunt for far more distant radio signals, researchers report online April 9 at arXiv.org. Astronomers have had to contend with enigmatic flares dubbed “perytons” ever since discovering equally puzzling fast radio bursts, or FRBs (SN: 8/9/14, p. 22), in 2007. Perytons and FRBs are quite similar, except that astronomers realized that perytons originate on Earth, possibly from some meteorological phenomenon, while FRBs come from other galaxies.

Three perytons in January coincided with independently detected blasts of 2.4 gigahertz radio waves — the same frequency that microwave ovens use to heat food. So researchers at the Parkes telescope in Australia spent weeks heating mugs of water while moving the massive radio dish around the sky, trying to re-create the phenomenon. Finally, researchers tried opening the oven door mid-cooking instead of letting the timer run out. Suddenly, perytons started showing up in the data.

The source of the galactic FRBs remain an intriguing mystery. Astronomers suspect they have something to do with imploding neutron stars or eruptions on magnetars. At this point, however, they might want to consider extraterrestrials nuking frozen pizzas.

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An Alien Radio Beacon? Possibly Not This Time

April 5, 2015 / / 0 Comments



An Alien Radio Beacon? Possibly Not This Time.

Excerpt from postpioneer.com


For practically a decade, astronomers have puzzled over strong bursts of radio energy that appear to be hailing from billions of light years away. Recently, we received reports of a new wrinkle to this mystery: The bursts seem to comply with a mathematical...

For practically a decade, astronomers have puzzled over strong bursts of radio energy that appear to be hailing from billions of light years away. Recently, we received reports of a new wrinkle to this mystery: The bursts seem to comply with a mathematical pattern, one that does not line up with something we know about cosmic physics.

And, of course, when we hear “mathematical pattern,” “radio transmission,” and “outer space,” all strung collectively, we straight away jump to our preferred explanation—aliens! (Or, you know, a decaying pulsar star, an unmapped spy satellite, or a cell telephone tower.)

It’s also probable that the pattern doesn’t basically exist.

Because 2007, telescopes have picked up almost a dozen so-known as “fast radio bursts,” pulses that last for mere milliseconds, but erupt with as a great deal power as the sun releases in a month. Where could they be coming from? To come across out, a group of researchers took advantage of a basic principle: That higher frequency radio waves encounter less interference as they traverse space, and are detected by our telescopes earlier than reduce frequency waves. The time delay, or “dispersion measure”, in between larger and reduce frequency radio waves from the very same pulse event can be applied to figure out the distance those waves traveled.

Here’s where things got weird. When researchers calculated the dispersion distance for each and every of eleven rapid radio bursts, they identified that every distance is an integer many of a single number: 187.5. When plotted on a graph, as the researchers show us in Figure 1 of their paper, the points type a striking pattern.

A single explanation is that the bursts are coming from distinctive sources, all at on a regular basis spaced intervals from the Earth, billions of light years away. They could also be brought on by a smaller cosmic object a lot closer to residence, such as a pulsar star, behaving according to some sort of physics we don’t yet understand. And then there’s the possibility that aliens are trying to communicate, by blasting simple numeric patterns into space.

But no matter how you slice it, eleven data points is a tiny sample set to draw any meaningful conclusions from. A handful of deviant observations could bring about the complete pattern to unravel.

And that is precisely what seems to be happening. As Nadia Drake reports for National Geographic, newer observations, not integrated in the most up-to-date scientific report or other well known media articles, don’t fit:

“There are 5 quickly radio bursts to be reported,” says Michael Kramer of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Radioastronomy. “They do not fit the pattern.”
Rather of aliens, unexpected astrophysics, or even Earthly interference, the mysterious mathematical pattern is probably an artifact produced by a little sample size, Ransom says. When working with a limited quantity of data – say, a population of 11 quickly radio bursts – it’s straightforward to draw lines that connect the dots. Usually, on the other hand, these lines disappear when much more dots are added.
“My prediction is that this pattern will be washed out quite immediately after a lot more fast radio bursts are located,” says West Virginia University’s Duncan Lorimer, who reported the very first burst in 2007. “It’s a great instance of how apparently considerable final results can be identified in sparse information sets.”

That is a bit of a bummer, but nevertheless, these radio bursts are fascinating, and what could be causing them remains as a lot of a mystery as ever. It could even nonetheless be aliens, if not an alien beacon. As SETI Institute Director Seth Shostak told me in an e mail:

“If it is a signal, nicely, it is surely NOT a message — except perhaps to say ‘here we are’. There’s not actual bandwidth to it, which suggests these speedy radio bursts can not encode several bits. But there are so many other possibilities, I feel that automatically attributing one thing in the sky that we don’t (at very first) understand to the operate of aliens is … premature!”

If there’s 1 point that is clear in this whole organization, it is that we’ve nonetheless got plenty to discover about the patterns woven into the universe around us.

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Scientist Claims to Discover Sounds of Stars

March 24, 2015 / / 0 Comments






Excerpt from clapway.com

If you can remember your primary school’s astronomy classes, the surface of a star is a very volatile place with tons of chemical reactions and extreme motions, and with immense gravitational pull. Generally a place you would not want to be. But researchers are now saying that if you were to orbit a star, it may be possible, with the right equipment, to hear what a star is saying! Or Singing?
Would you want to hear the sounds of stars?

The sound, unfortunately, is so high pitched that no mammal, not even a dolphin or bat, would be able to hear it, and couldn’t be heard anyway because space is a vacuum and there is no air medium for the sound to travel in.

With a frequency of nearly one trillion hertz, the sound was not only unexpected, but six million times higher than what any mammal can hear. But the researchers have developed a method to hear what they poetically refer to as “singing” or a star’s “song.”

Britain’s University of York’s researchers of hydrodynamics – the study of fluids in motion – fired a laser beam at the plasma in the laboratory and found that within a trillionth of a second, the plasma quickly moved from high-density to low-density areas.Plasma is a state of matter that makes up most things in the known universe and a few things on earth like lightning strikes and neon signs. It is basically a gas that has been charged with enough energy to loose the electrons from the atoms holding them together.

The spot where the low-density and high-density areas meet led to what the University researchers called a “traffic jam,” and resulted in an apparent sound wave, allowing us to know the sounds of stars.

Though this was achieved in the laboratory, scientists have yet to try to hear the sounds of a real star.

Dr. Pasley, a scientist from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, India, , said: “One of the few locations in nature where we believe this effect would occur is at the surface of stars. When they are accumulating new material stars could generate sound in a very similar manner to that which we observed in the laboratory–so the stars might be singing–but since sound cannot propagate through the vacuum of space, no-one can hear them.”

The technique used to observe the sound waves in the laboratory sort of works like a police speed camera, allowing scientists to accurately measure how the fluid would sound at the point of being struck by the laser at very minute timescales. The research was published in Physical Review Letters.

Perhaps in the future we might be able to listen in on the sounds of stars instead of just viewing it, and hear what they have to say!

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Boeing Receives Patent for a Force Field that Protects U.S. Military Vehicles from Blasts

March 24, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Excerpt from en.yibada.com The Boeing Company has received a patent from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for a device that generates a "force field" which deflects blasts from shells and explosive weapons. Technically, the patent is f...

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Ancient supernova had enough dust to make 7,000 earths

March 22, 2015 / / 0 Comments


The Cassiopeia A nebula is the gaseous remnant of a supernova explosion whose light reached the Earth around the year 1680.


Excerpt from sciencerecorder.com


A recent discovery has revealed that a supernovae is capable enough producing such quantities of cosmic dust that it can yield thousands of Earths.

An international team of researchers analyzed data obtained by SOFIA – a NASA and German Aerospace Center’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy project – which took images of a cosmic dust cloud.

Supernova remant. Image Credit: NASA/CXO/Herschel/VLA/Lau et al

“This discovery is a special feather in the cap for SOFIA, demonstrating how observations made within our own Milky Way galaxy can bear directly on our understanding of the evolution of galaxies billions of light years away,” said Pamela Marcum, one of the researchers.
The team made measurements of long infrared wavelengths of the Supernova Remnant Sagittarius A East, gaining an estimate for the total mass of dust within the cloud based on what it released.
SOFIA, an enhanced Boeing 747 with high end telescope, flies in altitudes between 39,000 to 45,000 feet to capture its images.

Astronomers already knew that the shock waves of supernovas produce high concentrations of dust when they move outward.
The question was whether the cosmic particles could withstand the intense shock waves.

“The dust survived the later onslaught of shock waves from the supernova explosion, and is now flowing into the interstellar medium where it can become part of the ‘seed material’ for new stars and planets,” said Ryan Lau, of Cornell University, who led the research team.

This new discovery encouraged the idea that the vast quantities of dust seen in remote yet fairly young galaxies may have been produced by the explosions of large stars that were actually much older.

The research was published in Science magazine on Thursday.

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MAVEN mission finds early surprises in Martian atmosphere

March 20, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Excerpt from chroniclebulletin.com University of Colorado-led Mars mission has observed two unexpected phenomena in the Martian atmosphere, unveiled Wednesday at the 46th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas.NASA describes the finds by MA...

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Is Titan submarine the most daring space mission yet?

March 19, 2015 / / 0 Comments

The submersible could extract cores from the seabed to unlock a rich climatic historyExcerpt from bbc.comDropping a robotic lander on to the surface of a comet was arguably one of the most audacious space achievements of recent times. But one...

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